It looks like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi will be retired, the same way Osama bin Laden was. Arab boogeyman have a shelf life and it appears al-Zarqawi is approaching his expiration date, as bin Laden did after the battle of Tora Bora. Or so we are told. Actually, Osama bin Laden died in mid-December, 2001, after escaping Tora Bora (it is also possible he was not there). Three months after Osama’s demise, Bush said, “I don’t know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don’t care. It’s not that important. It’s not our priority… I am truly not that concerned about him.”

Now one of America’s largest and most consistent disseminators of Bushcon lies and Bushzarro false reality, the Washington Post, tells us the “U.S. military is examining reports that insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi was present last week at a hospital in Anbar province and the possibility that he may be ill or wounded,” even though it is less than certain al-Zarqawi is in Iraq, let alone “al-Qaeda’s leader” there, and information about him is sketchy at best, verging on myth. As usual, with all things al-Zarqawi, “U.S. officials gave no details as to why they believe Zarqawi may be sick or injured.” Instead, the information about al-Zarqawi’s health is supposedly gleaned from a laptop computer abandoned in a car at an American checkpoint in Iraq. “When his car was pulled over at a checkpoint outside Ramadi, Zarqawi fled on foot, leaving behind the laptop, photos of himself and contacts, officials said. This Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is slippery and elusive—even though we are told he is of sub-par intelligence—able to elude the most powerful military in the world with relative ease, although this time he conveniently left behind his laptop computer, chock full of data to embellish the al-Zarqawi myth.

Meanwhile, Iranians with smaller cerebral cortexes than al-Zarqawi allowed themselves to be apprehended in the eastern Iraqi province of Diyala early last month. “Sources said that the 30 agents were mercenaries of the elite Qods (Jerusalem) Force branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps,” reports Iran Focus. “In one incident six individuals, of which five were Iranian and the other was an Iraqi, were apprehended by the Iraqi National Guard at a checkpoint near Maqdadiya in Iraq’s Diyala province. Those arrested were carrying light arms and RPG rockets, which they intended to use in operations in Diyala,” according to a source quoted by Iran Focus. No commentary is provided on the obvious stupidity of Iranian mercenaries thinking they would be able to get through a checkpoint in Iraq “carrying light arms and RPG rockets.”

At any rate, with all things al-Zarqawi, murkiness rules. “It was not clear whether suspicions about his health were linked to the seizure of the computer or grew directly out of Zarqawi’s reported presence last week at a hospital in Ramadi, the capital of restive Anbar province. Zarqawi’s group asserted in a written statement posted at two mosques, one of them in Ramadi, that the Jordanian-born militant was at the hospital last Thursday during a raid by U.S. forces but that the Americans missed him,” writes the Post.

In other words, not only is the phantom al-Zarqawi a slippery eel, he is also a dare devil, checking himself into the hospital, even though hospitals in Ramadi have experienced raids by occupation soldiers, “destroying [a pediatric hospital’s] doors and detaining members of staff… [and] storm[ing] an operating theatre where a doctor was carrying out caesarean surgery,” as al-Jazeera reported a few weeks ago.

Moreover, in December of last year, the U.S. military accused the resistance of using “the hospital in the volatile city of Ramadi to ambush U.S. soldiers… firing rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire at troops… Insurgents hid inside the Ramadi General Hospital and Medical College and in nearby areas waiting for the soldiers to move into their ambush zone,” according to the Associated Press. Such facts beg the question: is al-Zarqawi, a sort of Emmanuel Goldstein figure in the war against terrorism (and the people of Iraq) with a $25 million bounty on his head, sincerely stupid, visiting hospitals suspected of harboring resistance fighters (and raided by U.S. troops) and carelessly leaving behind a laptop computer containing all of sort of incriminating information?

If we are to believe the corporate media, “Zarqawi’s al Qaeda in Iraq group” taunted the Pentagon after they were unable to apprehend Abu, who is now considered a “sheik,” a term usually reserved for religious and tribal or village leaders. “Americans searched all the rooms [in the hospital] down to the air-conditioning ducts but ‘were not able to find Sheik Abu Musab Zarqawi, even though he was inside the hospital,’” the Post reports. Obviously, not only is al-Zarqawi a slippery eel, he also has the ability to make himself invisible, sort of like a character in a Ralph Ellison novel.

Lately, as the propaganda war escalates, the corporate media apparently wants us to believe al-Zarqawi is an Elvis-like figure, spotted all over the Anbar province, a district comprising “tens of thousands of square miles” and “largely guarded by a scaled-back American force, with few Iraqi troops stationed outside Ramadi. Wide-open spaces and a generally porous border with Syria give militants room to roam and hide.” In other words, according to the folks who sold us the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the mythical al-Zarqawi is free to move around, even though any number of Iraqis could drop a dime on him (and collect $25 million), and he even crosses the border into Syria with ease, a prime target on Bush’s list of nations to be invaded (and that is why Abu is reported crossing back and forth, to build yet another fiction, comparable to Saddam’s bedtime story relationship with Osama).

Every few months, we are told the U.S. is this close to capturing the boogeyman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Naturally, he escapes every time, as does the ghost of Osama. Instead, we are treated to the “capture” of Abu Farj al-Libbi, “the al-Qaeda third in command” and a “holy warrior,” as the Times Online calls the hapless Libyan, apparently captured at a farmhouse in the wild-west Waziristan region of Pakistan. It would appear Mr. al-Libbi has even less sense than the “elite” Qods “mercenaries” captured in Diyala last month because his downfall, according to the Times, came after he used his cell phone. “A military intelligence agent said Pakistani authorities received a tip-off after US agents intercepted a mobile phone call made by al-Libbi. They zeroed in on his suspected location and plainclothes agents, some disguised in burkas, hung around waiting for him to arrive.”

Considering how careless and stupid these terrorists are, I am not worried about dirty bombs and a repeat of nine eleven, a highly organized event we are expected to believe was hatched from a cave in Afghanistan. In order to keep our eye on the bouncing ball of terrorism, the Bushcons orchestrate these little events (occasionally with the help of the self-appointed military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, in Pakistan) and try to scare us with campfire stories about terrorists who “hate our freedom” and want to kill our kids and force us to kneel and face al-Masjid-al-Haraam (Mecca) at the point of an AK-47.

It is all nonsense, albeit profitable nonsense for the death merchants (Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, etc.), those invested in the “Homeland Security” industry, and of course it works fantastically for the Israelis who stand to rule over a splintered (after concerted bombing operations and invasions by the United States) Middle East, a long-held stratagem of the Zionist state and one they have worked toward for decades, as outlined in detail by Oded Yinon in the early 1980s. It should be noted, as well, that the Israelis excel at creating Arab boogeymen (for instance, Abu Nidal) and apparently this trick was learned by the Americans, who expect us to believe that dead terrorists (al-Zarqawi was killed in the Sulaimaniyah mountains of northern Iraq years ago) are on the move, checking into hospitals, rubbing elbows with conniving Syrians, and evading the United States with its high-tech arsenal of satellites and drones.

Lately, reading the Washington Post is sort of like picking up Grimm’s Fairy Tales, with about as much basis in reality.